Mexico

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Mawlamyine & GIANT Buddha, Myanmar (Burma)

We
arrived to Yangon bus terminal at around 4AM, we just change the bus
and continue another 8 hours to Mawlamyne. So pretty long journey
from Bagan almost 18hours. It was rainy almost all way so to be in bus wasn'tso
bad. Mawlamyine is Myanmar's third city but looks small. There is
couple of things to see around like the world biggest reclining
Buddha.. and to go to him, can easily changed into unexpected and adventurous trek.

3m high monk statues showing the way..

We
found quite OK hostel, and went to town. Quite nice, especially thanks
to huge river and something like promenade which was so slippy than
it was almost not possible to walk on it. Soon it was raining again so
we went to room. In the evening we went to night food market where
they prepared delicious barbecue. Gosia was on diet again but Michal
enjoyed it. We met lonely Australian traveler Chloe and make some
plans for another day.

BBQ at night market

In
the morning we decided to go to see the worlds biggest reclining
Buddha somewhere in mountains about an hour from the town. It was a
bit challenge to get a place in full booked bus but in the end we get
three small plastic chairs in corridor of bus. It actually doesn'tmatter
because the bus was so full that we had to stay anyway.

New monks showing the shorter way

That kicked us out on some crossroad and we went in diction to Buddha. The
way was marked by many almost identical monk statues. Soon the road
continue strait but the monk turn to right, so we followed them
latter the monks statues split into two ways so we chose the smaller
path and fallow the monks to forest and farther to mountains.
Sometimes it was a bit creepy to fallow this hundreds of identical
statues. Specially when the path lost in vegetation and our trip
behind the town changed into serious trek in mountains. We in sandals
Chloe in flip flaps, no path just monk statues, aggressive ants and
huge storm coming.. But after some time we found a path which took us
to big standing Buddha than a road to huge sitting Buddha and finally
a street to the biggest reclining Buddha.

Following monks acros mountains

Finally on a road

We
took of our shoes like in front of every holly place here and we went
inside. This Buddha was finished just few years ago and its more
like a building than statue. Inside there is four floor exposition of hundreds of statues about Buddhas lives which is still not finished.
Buddha from inside looks like huge military bunker or some
construction place. Definitely its not very nice to walk there with
bare feet.

Another even bigger statue construction place

Inside of Buddha

On
the way out Michal fall down from stairs and almost destroyed our
anyway already broken camera. (autofocus is not working, we have to
focus manually, so sorry for not so sharp photos) We realized that
the right way to Buddha was on the road and no one is following the
monks. And we went to find some transport back from the main road.

Infront of Buddha

Worker next to Buddhas head

We
were lucky because some local people took us for free with their
pick-up. Pick ups are normal small trucks who transport people. It
worked like a shared taxi so we expected to pay something but this
one just wanted to help us. We had some nice food from Squids and we
went to make a siesta. In the evening the barbecue and sleep. Biggest
Buddha was much more interesting than we expected. Its not nice peaceful place for meditation like another temples but If you in Burma its
definitely recommended.